Reporters at U.S. daily newspapers routinely turn to local, state and federal government websites to hunt for data that they can use in their stories, a recent survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute found.

Overall, the reporters contacted said that they looked for data on the government sites three to four days a week and were generally successful in finding what they needed. However, many of the 600 reporters surveyed by the Center for Advanced Social Research (CASR) at the Missouri School of Journalism said they found information that was outdated, poorly documented or incomplete.